Thomas Mcguane - Gallatin Canyon

She replied, “Don’t be a fool.”

“Oh, well,” said Errol, in odd contentment. Confusion could be pleasant when you were drinking; it kept the mind whirring agreeably. He began to eat, taking pieces of turtle from spits over the sputtering buttonwood coals. The teenager with dreadlocks was wholly focused on the food and neither laughed with the others nor in any way seemed to know he was not alone. The only other woman, a heavyset Spanish-speaking black, watched Errol with sullen attention as though he were there to present a bill or a summons. The blind man staring with white eyes across the fire into the darkness cupped his hands in front of him, into which Adan and Catarino placed pieces of food. Catarino asked Errol if he was enjoying his meal.

“I certainly am!”

“And the rum suits you, does it not?”

“Very agreeable.”

“Sometimes it is more important than food, no?”

“Sometimes,” said Errol.

Adan smiled at his food and asked, “Sometimes?”

Errol waited before answering. “I believe that is what I said.”

Catarino gave Errol a jovial thump on the back and returned the bottle to him. The wind had shifted slightly, and Errol moved closer to the buttonwood smoke to be free of the vicious little mosquitoes. When he glanced at Angela, sitting away from the fire, Catarino explained that mosquitoes didn’t bother black people.

“How is it that she is your slave?” Errol asked. At this, the blind man spoke in a surprisingly firm voice.

“Her man drowned.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, that is so,” said Adan. All except Angela seemed quite sad to reflect upon this event. “We didn’t take her back to her country. That would be against the law. Those blacks have laws no one can understand. With her man dead, she wished to throw in with us, but we were barely surviving as it was. You see how it is. We offered to let her come and be our slave, as that is entirely natural and appealing to blacks. As you see, she accepted.”

“Which only proves our point,” Adan added.

Errol took another slug of rum and gazed around at his companions, who seemed to him, as best as he could tell, to all be black. Then he thought of something. “What color do you think I am?” The three looked at each other. It was Catarino who finally spoke, his smile full of accommodation.

He said, “We haven’t decided.”

“I can’t take mosquitoes at all,” said Errol nervously. “Never could. They drive me nuts!”

The blind man said, “Have some more of that aguardiente. To enjoy your meal, you must calm your nerves.”

Adan looked pensive. “They served wine at the Last Supper. If we had not been prepared to offer refreshment to our guests, perhaps the turtle would not have offered himself to us. All things are connected. Even you, sir, are connected to us, if only in that we share a clearing which we made of sufficient size with our machetes as to offer you a place at our meal.” He smiled pleasantly. “Surely we knew you were coming.”

Errol’s expression of gratitude was interrupted by a burp, which brought a change of mood and all went about eating with a purpose, all except Angela, who paced about, desperately waving away the mosquitoes.

The sun must have awakened Errol, balled up next to the extinguished fire, the sun that caused the mosquitoes to retreat into the mangroves. Errol didn’t seem to remember where he was, and indeed his body was disagreeably unfamiliar. No parts of it seemed to fit together any longer and all were consumed by burning and itching. He felt his face with swollen fingers. His lips were drum tight, his eyelids so thick he could see them, and his cheeks lumpy with bites. He had lost his shoes, then remembered they’d been laced. Someone had taken his shoes. In any case, his swollen feet would no longer be contained by them. He lay back, let his mouth fall open, and gazed at the sky.

Once there was sufficient water in his boat, he could call it provisioned and begin the voyage home. He had hand lines and a shoebox full of diamond-shaped silver spoons: he would have fish and freshwater and that was enough. All this horror, this misshapen body, was temporary. Steps toward atonement had been taken; more could be promised. He remembered his mestizos and the groves. He tried reckoning how long he’d been away, but no exact answer was required. The cracker’s deadline had come and gone: he had broken his covenant with the mestizos and by now they were dispersed, thrown once again to fate, to wander the labor camps at Immokalee or Belle Glade, offering the days of their lives for sugar, citrus, and white men. His, like theirs, were the inconveniences of hell.

Certainly it lay in his power to arise, thank his hosts, sail away, and, against the cadences of wind and sea, sort through his many failings and the invoices for atonement that accompanied them. There was no mess so great it could not be broken down into a manageable sequence, a bill of lading for debts to oblivion.

As he stood, his buttocks abraded each other in special misery. My God, he wondered, how did they get in there? He began scratching himself all over. He hurried from one place to another as no sooner did he palliate some mad insistence than it appeared in another place. He was writhing and dancing without leaving his small spot in the dirt.

Something caught his eye.

Angela, arms wrapped around her sides, was lost in shaking, silent mirth. He stopped and stared at her through indignant, swollen eyes. He walked over to her, the pressure of edema squeezing up his calves with every step. She smiled at him when he arrived. She had unwound her turban and twisted it around her hands, allowing her hair to spring out in all directions. In his present condition, that hair struck him with its terrible vitality. There was something thrilling about it. She said, “I tink it will rain. And dis is my great day. Dey have freed me.”

“That’s nice,” said Errol sarcastically. His disfigured lips distorted this offensive speech but Angela seemed not to notice. “Are they still sleeping?”

“Oh, dey gone.”

Errol could not lose his snide tone. “Where exactly is there to go?”

Angela answered him imperturbably. “Miami.” Errol considered this for a remarkably short time.

“They took my boat?”

“Oh, yes.”

Errol seemed unsurprised. He considered levelly that he was without choices. His despair was such that the possibility of solace could only lie in the evaporation of all his options. Never before had he sensed himself greeting his destiny with so little resistance. It was an odd luxury to contemplate this, pants unbuttoned to accommodate his itches, spread fingers hanging at his sides, and a face whose risibility could now be enjoyed only by Angela, who had the upper hand of observing him.

An implement of sorts leaned against the shack. A corner of salvaged iron had been secured to a hardwood limb from which the branches had been removed with many wraps of rusting wire. Angela handed this to Errol and ordered him to follow her up the path through the mastic and wild palms. As they walked, Angela told him of the brothers’ dream of taking their father, the blind man, to Miami, where they had been told you could buy eyeballs on the black market. There had been much in the air about family values, but Errol had never imagined they’d be honored at his expense. Perhaps he didn’t really mind as he followed Angela with his new implement. Musing on the current arrangement, he wondered whether she was his owner and what color they each were, since the evidence of his eyes had proved insufficient.

Bright-hued birds flashed through the opening made by the path; near the flowers of tall vines, clouds of hummingbirds rose and sank, competing for nectar with surprising ferocity. A bananaquit, an urgent little yellow bird, danced down the path ahead of him, landed, and then scurried off like a mouse.